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![\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/fe-logo-13-feb-09-250-px1.jpg?resize=250%2C133&ssl=1\" "\\"Fe\\"")
<\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\nAll it took for the defense team to secure a not guilty verdict was to align enough reasonable doubt amongst the jurors that four minutes — the amount of time needed for Martin to reach his father’s house — was: \u201chow long Trayvon Martin had to run. <\/p>\n
“Did they [prosecutors] show you, tell you, explain to you, give you any insight whatsoever on what Trayvon Martin was doing four minutes before that fight started at the T intersection?\u201d he asked. \u201cDo you have a doubt as to what Trayvon Martin was doing and what he must have been thinking for four minutes?”<\/em><\/p>\n
By those very questions, the defense invited the jurors to scratch the race card, seeding four minutes of doubt as to what Trayvon Martin was up to. The same card makes young black men suspect before investigating, incarcerated or shot before having chance to protest their innocence. <\/p>\n
Any number of things could have happened between the two in those long 240 seconds during the chase. But “reasonable doubt” found the one with the weapon was the one who was in danger, racially profiling and killing the black kid with the Skittles, cell phone and can of ice tea who had no chance to tell his story in court. As we feared, at the end of the trial jurors found Trayvon Martin guilty, charged him with vague suspicious criminal intent and approved his execution ex-post facto for being a young black male in America. All it took was four minutes.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
With little exception, there is no place in the American legal system where being African American isn’t already a strike against you.<\/a> That bias is not only codified into law, its accreditation continues in the redlining of blacks in the media, society and economics as violence-prone and demonized mostly for being poor and an undue burden on society.<\/p>\n
Quality human services — starting with the Civil Rights Movement and the subsequent Great Society — were meant to bridge the divide caused by the history of America’s racially based economic and social inequality. Where are these services now? They have eroded over the decades, that erosion accelerating with a Republican majority Congress during the Gingrich era in the 1990s.<\/p>\n
That erosion furthered the demonization, social and legal isolation of blacks to the point where news of another violent and unjust death of a young black man is greeted with a forlorn sigh of acceptance, a shaking of the head that this “is just how it is.”<\/p>\n
I am not African American. I will never ever be fully articulate about the inequity of the legal system in the United States, let alone the 400 years of human trafficking that formed the basis of the U.S. economy at the country’s inception, and now even into today. I will never know the profound injustice of being criminalized for being black. Or having to live on a daily basis under the suspicion of doing something wrong simply by being my color.<\/a><\/p>\n
Yet the momentary blip of that tiny New York Times<\/em> ping “George Zimmerman Found Not Guilty” at the top of my screen sank my heart at the sight of it. It’s not about where we’ve been. It’s about where we are now and where we’re going. bell hooks’ words on the Zimmerman trial nails the stake in the heart:<\/p>\n
White supremacy has taught him that all people of color are threats irrespective of their behavior. Capitalism has taught him that, at all costs, his property can and must be protected. Patriarchy has taught him that his masculinity has to be proved by the willingness to conquer fear through aggression; that it would be unmanly to ask questions before taking action. <\/p>\n
Mass media then brings us the news of this in a newspeak manner that sounds almost jocular and celebratory, as though no tragedy has happened, as though the sacrifice of a young life was necessary to uphold property values and white patriarchal honor. Viewers are encouraged to feel sympathy for the white male home owner who made a mistake. The fact that this mistake led to the violent death of an innocent young man does not register; the narrative is worded in a manner that encourages viewers to identify with the one who made the mistake by doing what we are led to feel we might all do to \u201cprotect our property at all costs from any sense of perceived threat.”<\/p>\n
This is what the worship of death looks like.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Stand Your Ground, an ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) law<\/a> developed by a right-wing think tank and supported by big money was voted in by a majority of red states, mostly southern, that included Florida. ALEC laws like “Stand Your Ground” are rooted in white privilege and fear of the dark “other” who is — by their existence alone — suspect for taking your hard-earned “stuff.” The rights of a victimized member of the privileged class and their guardians trump those of a murdered young man.<\/p>\n
Trayvon Martin and the rest of us live in a world where, as bell hooks so elegantly addressed, death worship is at the very core. Little by little, step by step, the rights of individuals are sacrificed on the altar of expediency to continue the broken legal and social systems that feed us into an economic system — one that eats its young.<\/p>\n
Where we’re going is anyone’s guess, but I think that since human exploitation was such a successful model for creating an agricultural powerhouse in the 18th-century South, the use of that same economic model has never really been let go of in the present day. It’s been modified for 21st-century use. Not just here, but everywhere.<\/p>\n
As for all of us “others” — African Americans, Latinos, Asians, women, gays and the poor all benefited from the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s — if we continue to be silent, all of us “others” will fall with its decline, divided from each other, driven by suspicion against each other in our current economic state of have and have-not. Hoping that in our dog-eat-dog world of fighting for a decreasing share of the pie, whoever survives this increasingly smaller life raft we call ‘living in the USA’ will be us. This is the divide that conquers us all.<\/p>\n
You’ll have to forgive my unrelenting approach to today’s thread. Many of you who have heard this same rap before might possibly have the same opinion you’ve had when I wrote about it in the past. But I am growing weary of the belief in the same lies, repeated over and over, that keep us from recognizing just how numb we are becoming. Another life has been taken.<\/p>\n
If there is any hope to be drawn from the acquittal of George Zimmerman, it’s that we are recognizing in our moment of stunned, painful silence over the trial’s outcome that the deeper wrong of intolerance that killed Trayvon Martin diminishes our collective soul and must be righted. The silence must be broken, and if not now, when? <\/p>\n
Please speak.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Within minutes upon hearing the verdict in the George Zimmerman case, I was stunned into a soul-deep retreat. It’s not that I didn’t know it would happen. This is America, after all. You knew the sooner the verdict came in that Zimmerman would be acquitted. The jury in the Zimmerman trial did not disappoint. All … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1740],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68622"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68622\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}